ATLaS News

In the wake of this week's violence, I see folks (me included!) really struggling, struggling to reconnect with the love that will see us all through this dark place. It is so easy to blame, to diminish, to hate, to generalize, to globalize. I've seen it on both sides, and it gets us nowhere. Demons and Others is the working title of a novel I am writing. There is a poem I wrote as part of the the story that I want to share - share it because we are at a crossroads. We can decide to come together in love and find our way back to human connection. Or we can blame and otherise and be consumed by our imaginary demons. Obviously, I hope for the former. In love, Kirstin

Demons and Others

I.Price-tagged as the otherHumanity yields to vectorsof limited dimension and superficial valueHeads are sold and bartered ascommodities without history or feeling ina market that shaves razor thin layers of skinto trade a bloody currencycapitalized by difference.

II.In the teachings of God and Allahmarket traders find a blood thirstonly assuaged when cultural hearts -be it twin towers, a holy book, or a holy man -lie crumbled and pulp-like, gushingtradition to the forgottenThe limbs of women and children:collateral: as nations mortgage their soulsto define normal andwin holy wars of various and ridiculous names- the war on drugs, desert storm, jihad.

III.Longing for distance from gruesome details and destructionnations picket and brutalize their citizensto cement the moral certaintythat their neighbors are not the onesbeheading journalists,raping children,throwing acid in the faces of young women,shooting up classrooms full of children or theaters full of consumers.No, no cause for concern. It is theothers reigning this terror down on our headsand creating our shared suffering.

IV.And citizens, oceans across, buy these answersnot caring that the definitions of the otherswere stolen – at gunpoint, at knifepoint, at bombpoint –Whatever.The ease of erasure is sickeningly easyAnd in the shadow of this ease, whole societiescondone torture in all its nameable and unnameable forms,As citizens stand by, participate, look away.Headlines aside,It's the others who are the demons.Not us, not our sons, daughters, husbands, wives.And so it unfolds again, humanity's cyclical destruction,under the cloak of anonymity and righteousness.And on it goes.(c) Kirstin Eidenbach, 2014